You don't have to like John McCain to feel bad that he's dying from cancer. Conversely, you don't have to hate him to acknowledge that his legacy is going to be a seriously mixed bag of warmongering combined with vanishingly rare Republican integrity. You do, however, have to be ...read more
I vehemently disagree with John McCain on almost all political issues. He is a war obsessed conservative who has been on the wrong side of very military issue I can think of, an enemy of social security and the welfare state, and no friend to women's rights. I also think he is a ...read more
Most halls of fame have very high standards. The Baseball Hall of Fame, for example, requires ten to fifteen years of dominance in the sport, whether a smattering of batting and home run titles, a string of twenty-win seasons, or embodying the elite of the elite at your position ...read more
Today we honor the life of Martin Luther King Jr. Through the power of his words and his actions, MLK inspired people to put their lives on the line in the fight for equality between the races, a struggle that continues to this day. When we remember him, we should remember both ...read more
I woke up this morning with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, because I knew that as soon as I turned on my phone, I'd get a notification of the Republican's "accomplishment." Late last night, the Republican Party displayed their true colors by passing their tax bill ...read more
For those of you on tenterhooks concerning the disastrous new GOP tax bill, your worrying is about to get worse: John McCain, the deciding vote in killing the last two GOP attempts to destroy Obamacare, just announced he will support this bill today, saying: “I believe this ...read more
I genuinely like to see the best in people, regardless of political persuasion or religious affiliation. I also have close friends who are Trump supporters and think they are fine people (with whom I disagree with profoundly of course). But after seeing this heartbreaking tweet ...read more
Watching CSPAN 2 last night as Sen. John McCain joined Sens. Collins and Murkowski in voting against the GOP's deeply cruel and cynical "skinny repeal" of the Affordable Care Act was perhaps the most triumphant political moment since before the 2016 election. The rest of the ...read more
While the health care senate vote last night was nail biting, serious stuff, there was an interaction on Twitter that made me laugh out loud for several minutes. Just after the vote went through and the Republicans failed again to dismantle health care for millions of Americans, ...read more
We'll have more on this tomorrow, but great news for the millions of Americans who stood to lose their health care during the epic drama that unfolded in the Senate tonight. From CNN: The Senate has dealt a devastating setback to the Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare, ...read more
John McCain has brain cancer and if the diagnosis is correct, his remaining life expectancy can range anywhere between 12 to 60 months in the best case scenario. As an eighty year old man who was in the armed services, fought for his country in Vietnam, suffered through torture ...read more
Recently diagnosed with the most severe form of brain cancer, John McCain is making a dramatic return to Washington today to cast his vote to further debate in the Senate on the Obamacare repeal bill Republicans are desperate to pass. While McCain and his family deserve the ...read more
While pretty much every Republican currently in office is awful, there are seven that stand out from the rest of the crowd. They exemplify everything that's wrong with the modern right wing and deserve a round of applause for their extraordinary effort to destroy everything good ...read more
If there’s one clear example of continuation from the Obama to Trump administrations, it’s that the war in Afghanistan has no end in sight. Fifteen years in, it remains the longest military conflict the United States has been involved in. The most recent evaluations from generals ...read more
If there’s one thing you can always rely on Senator John McCain for, it’s doing his best to scare the American public. The Arizona Republican’s penchant for supporting aggressive military action against a variety of menacing actors overseas, or at the very least, consistently ...read more
Last week, America watched as Donald Trump not only fired FBI Director James Comey (a.k.a. Giant Man in Real Life) for clearly bullshit reasons, but SprayTan Saddam couldn’t even be bothered to defend those bullshit reasons for an entire 48 hours, so he just flat out admitted — ...read more
It has been a very, very long time since John McCain has lived up to his "Maverick" reputation -- so much so that you'd be entirely forgiven for thinking the Arizonan senator was just another hack Republican looking after American corporate interests for a living. However, the ...read more
As egomaniacs resting their fat, gilded asses on the seat of power are wont to do, Donald Trump waved his big boy pee-pee around last night by launching 50+ Tomahawk missiles into Syria in an effort to teach Syria a lesson about bombing Syrians that Donald Trump specifically and ...read more
Australia is a country that, like most of the English-speaking nations of the world, is a staunch U.S. ally. So the news on Wednesday that Donald Trump's weekend call with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was an unmitigated disaster has sent a shock through the U.S. political ...read more
Back before Antonin Scalia (Satan Rot His Soul), died last year, a lot of anti-Hillary liberals insisted that the Supreme Court didn't matter; that ideological purity was far more important. After he died and Republicans took the unprecedented step of blocking any new Court ...read more
Editors note: This article was originally published on Banter M, our digital magazine for members. I'm republishing it here in light of McCain's recent denouncement of Donald Trump and the withdrawal of his endorsement. While McCain might think this exonerates him from the ...read more
In this issue of Banter M: John McCain is Responsible For Donald Trump - There are many competing theories as to why a madman like Donald Trump is running for president. But Ben Cohen argues that John McCain's 2008 bid for the White House paved the way for the emergence of Trump ...read more
John McCain just defeated challenger Kelli Ward in the Republican primary race for the Arizona Senate, and heads into what looks like a very tough battle with Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick. McCain, who is now 80 years old, has remained in the Senate since 1987 -- a good run ...read more
It's been a while since we talked about Glenn Greenwald and his insufferably haughty attitude about the American system of government and our, admittedly, weird yet effective political process. Frankly, since my brief and amicable exchange with Greenwald following the ...read more
Donald Trump has a way of speaking that’s actually quite soothing. Sure, his voice is brash and it cracks like a screamo singer when he gets worked up, but it meanders fluffily and demands very little of your critical thinking. It's an almost abstract form of speaking that hits ...read more
Given John McCain recently blamed Obama for the massacre in Orlando, I thought it would be a good time to reminisce about the time the president bitch slapped the Arizona Senator on live television. Because, well, what is better than watching a right wing blowhard getting their ...read more
Two days ago, British Labour MP Jo Cox was brutally murdered by a Tommy Mair in West Yorkshire. She was stabbed, beaten, and shot to death in broad daylight despite passersby's attempts to stop the assault. While details are still emerging about the horrific case, we know that ...read more
There you have it -- once respected politician on both sides of the aisle John McCain has finally put the nail in the coffin of his already wrecked legacy by stating he would back Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for president. McCain almost irreversibly ruined his ...read more
Every time you think the comedy of errors that is the Republican party right now can't get any more ridiculous or depressing, you wake up and realize it's a brand new day. It's a whole new 24 hours for somebody within the GOP establishment to do something that's the political ...read more
As the Republican Party grapples with the very real prospect that Donald Trump will be their nominee for the presidency, other candidates have been busy plugging themselves as sensible moderates in a field of loonies. Marco Rubio is the frontrunner, but John Kasich is regarded ...read more
The media has its hair on fire over the Donald trump controversy du jour, but this one is probably the least surprising thing to happen since the last time someone barfed at a Guy Fieri restaurant. While conducting a town hall meeting in New Hampshire Thursday, a racist Trump ...read more
Almost every Republican presidential candidate wasted no time in piling on Donald Trump over his ill-advised joke about Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) military service, a lightning-fast reflex that cannot be lost on the Mexicans whom Trump called rapists, and which prompted only ...read more
Over the weekend, Donald Trump not only defied one of the biggest no-nos in America political culture, he smashed it over the head and literally urinated on it. Speaking to at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, Trump astonishingly questioned John McCain's war hero ...read more
Over the weekend, President Obama blasted Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and other Republicans over their treacherous attempts to derail the Iran nuclear deal, singling McCain out over his apparent willingness to trust the Iranian supreme leader over his Vietnam brother and American ...read more
The drumbeat for (more) ground troops in the war with ISIS has resulted in some strange bedfellows, and on Monday morning, some even stranger criticism out of a leading Republican hawk. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joe Scarborough were explaining how President Obama is just ...read more
What happens when you invade the wrong country for the wrong reasons, fail to stop a civil war by refusing to rebuild it properly, then start bombing neighboring countries? If your answer is: "A complete and utter nightmare," you'd be right. After the US invaded Afghanistan ...read more
You know those Civil War reenactments where everybody dresses up and pretends to fight the Battle of Fresno or whatever? Well, today lawmakers and guests on Capitol Hill were given a real surprise treat as Code Pink and Arizona Sen. John McCain apparently joined forces to ...read more
If Hillary Clinton is to be believed (and she is probably not), she and her husband are the protagonists of the greatest rags to riches story in memory. Having exited the White House in 2001 "dead broke," the Clintons have since amassed a fortune of some $100 million, much of it ...read more
As the U.S. ceaselessly moves towards yet another large-scale conflict in the Middle East, hawks in Congress are already screeching that the current U.S. strategy to destroy Islamic State just isn't bold enough. Instead of planes and air-to-surface missiles, they insist, Obama ...read more
If you needed more proof that the corporate news media is one giant factory of nepotistic nothingness, the recent hiring of former Obama press secretary Jay Carney by CNN should hopefully dispel any myth of its relevance. Speaking to Politico before Obama's speech on ISIL last ...read more
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) made news over the weekend by becoming the latest member of the "Even Some Democrats" club that the mainstream press loves, telling NBC News' Andrea Mitchell that she thinks President Obama is being "too cautious" about the Islamic State, and ...read more
If you thought you've already heard the worst thing you can hear from a conservative in the national immigration debate, you're about to feel really silly. That's because Rich Lowry of the National Review just dialed it up to, well, does it go higher than 11? Because it seems ...read more
One of the big stories on cable news today is the fact that, according to anonymous sources, President Obama used the word "horseshit" to describe the horseshit criticism that if he'd only armed moderate Syrian rebels, we wouldn't be having all these problems with ISIS right ...read more
If you're the type of conservative who thinks that being called out for homophobia is a form of bigotry or censorship, dealing with the liberal crowd on Facebook might be too much for you. Until now, Republicans' main alternative has been the Tea Party Community, a writhing ...read more
For those who believe that what's wrong with America can't be solved by a Sarah Palin television channel, you're in luck! The former governor of Alaska and self-described Grizzly Mama is starting her own station. For a cool $9.95 a month or $99.95 a year, you'll have unlimited ...read more
If you want to know who has the edge right now in the unofficial race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, just take a look at who's being attacked by other presumptive candidates and party establishment types. Right now, that whipping boy is Rand Paul, who's not ...read more
With former Bush administration officials and other such neoconservatives coming out of the woodwork to offer their super ideas on the situation in Iraq while slamming President Obama, it's never been a better time for a Throwback Thursday post to remind everyone why Iraq is the ...read more
The Washington Post published a travesty of a column on Monday by the baby-faced, toddler-brained, and whiny, Marc Thiessen that as of this writing, had notched a whopping 4,064 comments. What could possibly account for this mind-blowingly high number of comments on a piece by ...read more
We all know the Republican Party is absolutely shameless, and most of the time that shamelessness is rightfully met with derision and hostility. But every once in a while, the utter lack of Republican shame on certain issues is so incredible, you can only stand back with your ...read more
The collapse of Iraq back into a Bush-era Hell on Earth has brought the usual suspects out of the woodwork to insist that the United States should have kept sending Americans to fight and die in the hellhole that they lied us into. They include Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who ...read more